Powerless Night

It’s that time of the year and one of those odd days, when a waxing moon’s light is good enough to awaken a city drenched in darkness with its cool, lustrous fingers – for there is no light glowing, no fans or fridges on, only powersaver lamps and generators that drone the quiet of the evening – for there’s been a blackout.

A blackout good enough to inspire people to light coffee-scented candles gifted an eon ago by a loving woman from the Occident, good enough to ruffle and shuffle the old lamps – be they made of Silver or Clay, be they hand-carved or colorfully painted with Paisley and Polka print, good enough to call it a day – when it’s already night, the 2nd Night of the Eid, when Isaac and Abraham are remembered, when brothers and sisters are fed, when families gather to commemorate a sacrifice almost holy. A Blackout ready to get wiped out by lunar forces.

Does it take us this lack of power, to feel powerful enough to create, compose or conspire? Why torment oneself with halogens when a thin wick filled with soot and kerosene-rests can rewind the past and unfold the future in a hallucinating world of turbaned-men and veiled-women, in a diminishing community of writers, poets, philosophers and thinkers, in a growing sorority of consumers, grumblers and misers?

How powerless are we in front of this Power? In its name are engraved tomorrow’s destructive futures, in its memories are etched yesterday’s failures, in its Being are present luminaries and whirlwinds of ions.

For once, it disappeared. To leave us to our own selves – breathing, seeing, hearing, sweating, walking and looking… for light, for air, for all that we’re used to – as if we could create an equivalent of Power in its temporary absence. And then, in the Moment that the Human Being feels happy that it’s absent, it appears out of nowhere – crackling the singular harmony of new found Joys, the Joys of candle-lit airs, the Joys of women gossiping in whispers, Crickets hustling in the evening and children making stealthy footsteps, the Joys of playing in the Dark with shadows and forms…

Power indeed. Powerless we are.

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About the author

Distracted as ever - by life and its vibrant hues, Srini discovered writing recently when a bushy eye-browed Muse with luscious lips tickled his senses with her couplets. Fat man grew up to be a fitness conscious cook, a gardener by grandma's inherited green thumb and an Agnostic who used to believe in myriad rituals and gods and goddesses of the Southern landscapes, landscapes where rice paddies and Gopurams made people believe in the gifts of music, culture, art and nature's miracles. With a face that's expressive enough to throw off a couple of stubborn people off their stools, and an arse that can dance to drum and base, he's constantly trying to bridge his semi-German thoughts with his roots back in the Land of the Peppers. He writes, occasionally.

I would say, when we choose not to, even the waxing moon’s light is not good enough to rewind the past or unfold the future.
Irrespective of halogens or waxing moons, some people simply fail to see the small little lucid joys of life.

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